Chamblee54

Something is going on in Iran.
There was an election, and the incumbents had the bad taste to announce the results before the polls had closed. To hear them tell it, the presiding President and fashion icon Mahmoud Ahmedinejad won a landslide. The supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi do not agree, and have been expressing themselves in the streets. It is getting nasty.
It is very, very tough to tell what is going on there. Andrew Sullivan has been giving this story a lot of space, and it is tough to add it all up. How it is going to play out is anyone’s guess. Chamblee54 is going to throw a few things out, and see if that helps.
1- The genuine power in Iran is a cleric named Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Exactly how much power the President has is a tough call.
2- This is not how elections are supposed to work. In a functional system, the Government has fair elections, and the people go along with the results. It is tough to see a future election working, especially if the dissidents get this one thrown out by their protests. Even if they are right this time, in the future it might be disgruntled opposition that huffs and puffs and gets the results thrown out.
3- Even considering that these people may have less than noble motives, it is still remarkable to see them standing up to their government this way. The Iranian people have had a wild ride. They threw out the Shah, aka the Persian Saddam. They held Americans hostage at the embassy. They were invaded by Iraq, who was supported by the United States. A gruesome eight year war followed, with the United States and Israel cynically selling weapons to Iran.
In the past few years, next door enemy Iraq was conquered. An unfortunate man was elected President of Iran. When he ran for reelection, the people decided it was time for another revolution.
4-Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter in 1787: “God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion…And what country can preserve its liberties, if it’s rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms… The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
Mr. Jefferson was President in 1807, or twenty years after he wrote that letter. It is assumed he did not want a revolution while he was President.
5- Back to the Revolution du Jour. Mir Hossein Mousavi may be less prone to saying outlandish things than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This does not mean he is a totally cool person.
“Moussavi served as Iran’s prime minister from 1981 to 1989, during the Iranian Revolution’s formative phase. His closest ally in those days was Khamenei. Moussavi defended the seizure and 444-day imprisonment of the American hostages; he edited a party newspaper that opposed their ’81 release. He helped sponsor Hezbollah. He was instrumental in launching Iran’s chemical weapons program. And his “reformist” coalition is closely allied with conservative economic barons (such as former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, scion of a family fortune); these people have domestic financial grievances with Ahmadinejad – as opposed to having any love for America or western democracy.
6- BHO is in a tricky situation. If he ignores the rebels, he is wrong. If he supports the rebels, then the rebels get labeled as puppets. This will be a test to see if BHO has shmartz to go along with stage presence. The Repubs have wasted little time in denouncing him, and undermining support. This is to be expected by the opposition.
7- There probably is a connection between the Iranian revolution and the events next door in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
8-With neighbors like Iraq, Israel, and the Stan countries, is it any wonder that some in Iran want the bomb?
9- The people fighting in the streets against their government would die by the thousands if Israel was to nuke Iran.